


Dramatic Irony

by Alexa_Piper



Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Gen, This one's pure angst, backdated fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27222547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexa_Piper/pseuds/Alexa_Piper
Summary: “What on earth happened to your arm?”
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Dramatic Irony

“Drive,” Arthur gasped as the door slammed shut behind him.

“But that was-”

“Just drive!” he shouted, wriggling so that she could slip past him into the drivers’ seat.

“That was Lew-”

“Vivi,” Arthur whimpered, “we can come back later.”

He clamped his good hand, his flesh hand, over the spot where metal met skin. Blood discoloured the sleeve of his shirt, and Arthur took a shuddering breath. “I think my port’s damaged,” he explained.

Vivi didn’t move to take the keys from where Arthur had dropped them on the floor. “We’ll come back, right?”

Arthur nodded, breathing as deeply and evenly as possible as the pain in his arm throbbed and spiked with every heartbeat, and why had he ever wanted to connect his nerves to this metal monstrosity because damn, it _hurt!_

As Vivi retrieved the keys and the engine spluttered to life, Arthur fancied that through the tears that were slipping down his cheeks, he could see somebody standing in one of the mansion’s dimly-lit windows.

…

The corner traffic lights reflected on the windscreen of the van as Vivi waited to pull into the little B&B half an hour down the road. It wasn’t the spot they’d originally planned to spend the first night of their celebratory road trip, but so long as there was a hot bath, Arthur didn’t really care.

“I thought you said that your arm was fine for exertion.”

Arthur flinched. It was the first thing that she’d said since they pulled away from the mansion - _Lewis'_ mansion, he reminded himself - and the accusation was like she’d slapped him. In fact, he’d have preferred it if she’d slapped him.

It took a moment to find his voice. “It’s fine for small things,” Arthur responded, finally peeling his hand away from the bloodied sleeve. His fingers were tacky with drying blood. “I didn’t exactly think that I’d get dropped down a trapdoor, or chased around a massive building, or a-attacked…”

Vivi’s shoulders stiffened, and Arthur shrank back in his seat. The movement pressed Mystery against his side, and the mechanic jumped, shying away from the dog automatically.

The light turned green, and Vivi pulled the van into a parking space directly outside the motel’s office doors. She turned off the vehicle and unclasped her seat belt before twisting to fully face the trembling man.

“What am I going to do with you,” she sighed.

Arthur found his gaze drawn towards his friend’s face, and was surprised to notice sagging shadows beneath her eyes that matched his own.

“I thought you don’t remember what happened in the cave,” he blurted.

Her face twisted into something that he couldn’t place before smoothing back into exhaustion.

“I don’t.” Vivi settled back into her seat with a shrug, and Arthur clamped his hand around the hem of his shirt in an attempt to quell its shaking.

His other, _artificial_ arm hung useless and unmoving at his side.

Vivi’s gaze traced that false limb, and she reached for Arthur’s sleeve. “Let me disconnect that,” she offered.

Arthur shook his head. “Let’s go inside first, and then we can get this thing off me where there’s more room to move.”

She stared at him for a moment, and Arthur swallowed thickly and tried his best to smile.

Vivi grimaced back at him. “We’re seriously a mess,” she sighed.

Arthur chuckled, leaning back against the headrest and closing his eyes. “Yeah, we are.”

With a rustle of cloth, the girl beside him opened the door and slipped from her seat.

“Arthur?”

He opened his eyes again, meeting her gaze. “Yeah?”

“Was the cave really as horrible as my nightmares?”

She stood just outside the van, leaning one hand against the open door. She looked so sad, like a balloon that had once floated proudly overhead but now rested on the floor, its surface sagging and wrinkled.

He opened his mouth to reassure her that that wasn’t the case, that everything was fine, but nothing came to mind. He couldn’t lie anymore.

Something in his face must have betrayed him because Vivi sighed. “Yeah, I thought so,” she whispered before shutting the door with a gentle thump.

…

The stars glimmered through the open rear doors of the van, and Arthur sighed as he stared at them. His port still throbbed steadily, but the gut-wrenching, nauseating _agony_ had subsided somewhat now that the nerves had been disconnected. Vivi had even managed to force him to take his prescription painkillers, although they hadn’t begun to work yet.

The offending metallic limb was draped over his lap, and Arthur grumbled as he fiddled with one of the wires. The job was difficult one-handed, and almost impossible without a workbench, but after a hot bath and wrapping up his stump-port in thick white bandages, he needed to sit outside for a while.

They really shouldn’t have gone on this trip.

Arthur had been against it, but Vivi had been her usual excited self, and how could he not give in to her enthusiasm after the horrible months that they’d just had?

Sure, his arm hadn’t been quite as ready as he’d inferred.

Sure, he still jumped and jolted whenever Mystery bumped against him, even if the dog-that-Arthur-knew-was-some-sort-of-monster was after nothing more than a scratch behind the ears.

Sure, Arthur himself barely slept, barely ate, barely lived with the shadow that had cast itself over him.

But why couldn’t they _just once_ have nothing bad happen?

The warm night air chilled around him, and Arthur shuddered as his fragile soul trembled with the ripples in the spectral plane.

Something appeared in the darkness before him, glowing purple and radiating grief and fury that sang in twin beats to the pain that constantly ran through Arthur’s own soul.

The mechanic scuttled backwards with a cry, but he only had one arm, and even though it’d been ten months since he’d had two of the things, rehab really isn’t enough to sort out those reflexes that rely on limbs that aren’t there anymore.

He fell onto his damaged side with a yelp, immediately curling around a port that screamed with pain at the impact. Tears sprang to his eyes for the second time that evening, and a sob slipped involuntarily through his lips.

The arm clattered to the ground outside the van.

Arthur lay on the floor, his hand once again clasped around his port and tears streaming down his cheeks. This was bad. He’d need more rehab, more stitches, more damned hospitals. They’d remove the port. He’d have to start again.

The shadows danced around him, cast by a source of purple light just outside the van.

Arthur gritted his teeth, forcing himself to sit up. He kept his gaze away from the ghost that he knew waited there for him, busying himself instead by checking the fresh bandages on his stump. A dark spot the size of a pinhead had seeped through the fabric, and was growing steadily larger.

The shadows moved with the figure in his peripheral vision, and Arthur flinched back, this time leaning on his good arm. This was it - he was going to die here, in the back of the van, with nothing to defend himself except for a toolbox, a box of trail mix, and a bag full of books. Panic stuck in his throat, and Arthur’s heart beat wildly, like a bird fluttering frantically about its cage.

The ghost straightened up, and Arthur found himself staring not into the bone-white skull from the mansion, but something else entirely.

Lewis’ mouth and eyebrows turned down in a frown, and in his large, gentle hands, he held a shiny metal limb.

“Artie,” he whispered, and the mechanic shuddered at the echoes of the void that shadowed the spectre’s every syllable, “what on earth happened to your arm?”


End file.
